Tim Holt

1
Tim Holt

• University of Southampton

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Still Seeking the New Paradigm

• Diane Coyle

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The Technology

• 56 average annual growth rate in computational
  power
• cluster of related technologies biotech,
  nanotech, robotics, materials
• IT has characteristics of general purpose
  technology

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GPTs Three stages

• faster productivity growth in the innovating
  sector
• falling prices in this sector lead to capital
  deepening in other industries
• reorganisation of production around new capital
  goods through economy

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Policy context in 19th century

• financial innovations limited liability,
  stockmarket, investment banking
• market context anti-trust policy, national
  standardisation
• legal background contract law, tort liability

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Policy context in 21st century?

• competition policy in network markets
• intellectual property
• globalisation (scope of market)
• accountancy
• structure and boundaries of the firm
• corporate governance

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Productivity trend the services puzzle

• declines in measured productivity in some cases
  inconsistent with experience
• but are the growing sectors bound to be the
  low-productivity ones?
• the leisure society, consumption vs production
• time use
• productivity not a post-industrial concept
• quality vs quantity

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• Any time of fundamental technological change is
  likely to be a time when our concepts, our units
  of measurement, our framing of issues change. We
  are on a frontier, and frontiers develop frontier
  cultures and frontier ideologies.
• Robert Shiller, forthcoming
• An information age strangely lacking in
  information.

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Cost of computer power
US per mflop/s (log scale)
Source Intel
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Global manufacturing
Manufactures exports as share of manufacturing
value added
Source OECD
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Proportion of workforce using computers
Source MGI
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Top 100 global companies, by sector
Ranked by market capitalization, 2001, FTSE 500
list
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Conclusions

• what has changed?
• what we might like to know
• still seeking the new paradigm